This invention relates to bomb liners, and more particularly to bomb liners which contain a matrix support material and a desensitizing agent capable of diluting and endothermically reacting with the explosive in a bomb.
Disasters aboard the USS Forrestal and the USS Enterprise cost the United States heavily in both men and equipment. These disasters were caused by and were prolonged by ordance being exposed to jet fuel fire and/or the exhaust from a jet engine starter impinging on a warhead. When ordnance items are exposed to heat generated by fires, the explosive reaches a critical temperature, approximately 500.degree. F. (260.degree. C.) for formulations containing RDX and TNT, at which the explosive undergoes a rapid, exothermic decomposition. In the confines of ordnance, the decomposition reaction quickly progresses from deflagration to detonation. If engulfed in a JP-5 fire, unprotected, heavy steel-walled MK 80 series bombs detonate in as little as 115 seconds. The time to destruction has been extended to approximately 9 minutes by using an exterior intumescent paint and thickened asphaltic hot melt. This is not an ideal solution because the paint sloughs off in handling and does not comply with dimensional tolerances.
Historically, asphaltic hot melt has been used to coat the interior of ordnance items to protect the explosive load from the cracks and rust of the metal shell. Typical asphaltic hot melt mixtures soften at 200.degree. to 235.degree. F. (93.degree. to 113.degree. C.) and are liquid and pourable into the bomb shell at 430.degree. F. (221.degree. C.). Mass spectrometric analysis identifies the asphaltic hot melt as principally aliphatic hydrocarbons with minor quantities of aromatic compounds with aliphatic side chains. Some unsaturated carbon-carbon double bonds are found in the aliphatic hydrocarbons and side chains. The average chain length in the aliphatic fraction is 26 carbon atoms, and the average chain length of the aliphatic side chain on the aromatic compounds is 11 carbon atoms. Since the asphaltic hot melt is a mixture of compounds of varying chain lengths and structure, both the molten and solidified asphaltic hot melt are pliable and cracking is not observed when the molten asphaltic hot melt solidifies. The cold metal of the warhead case causes the hot melt to gell, coating the interior of the metal shell, and then the excess hot melt is poured out. A uniform coating of approximately 1/16- to 1/8-in. thickness is achieved.
Typical RDX-TNT based explosives, such as H-6, melt at 178.degree. F. (81.degree. C.) and are poured into the ordnance shell at 200.degree. F. (93.degree. C.). When bombs loaded with H/6 and lined with asphaltic hot melt liner are engulfed in a JP-5 fire, a reaction can occur within as little as 115 seconds. This allows very little time for any form of firefighting procedures. Research conducted to characterize ordnance items in a fire shows that the average temperature of the asphaltic hot melt-explosive interface at the time of the warhead self destruction is approximately 500.degree. F.
When ordnance items are explosed to a fire, the temperature of the liner-explosive interface is raised until it reaches a temperature of 500.degree. F. (260.degree. C.), at which the explosive undergoes a rapid exothermic irreversible decomposition. By a combination of physical and chemical phenomena, the liner material of the present invention extend the time it takes for the explosive to reach the temperature at which the self-sustaining, irreversible, exothermic decomposition occurs. Ordnance items can be caused to react violently (cook off) if they are totally engulfed in flames which produce a very high, evenly distributed heat flux or if they are removed some distance from the flames so that an uneven heat flux results. Regardless of the magnitude or evenness of the heat flux, desirable properties for the liner materials are (a) no interaction with the explosive below 350.degree. F. (177.degree. C.), (b) substantial absorption of heat (an endothermic process) between 305.degree. and 400.degree. F. (177.degree. and 204.degree. C.), and (c) thermal release of the desensitizing agent between 400.degree. and 500.degree. F. (204.degree. and 260.degree. C.). A combination of thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and small-scale-bomb cookoff tests have been used to screen, evaluate, and characterize potential materials with respect to the above requirements. The most preferred formulation, 65% DENFLEX and 35% s-trithiane, gave a small-bomb cookoff time of 9 minutes, 11 seconds for a 0.25-in. interior liner. This cookoff time is a marked improvement over the cookoff time of 2 minutes, 25 seconds for a 100% asphaltic hot-melt liner of the same thickness.
When TNT and/or RDX-based explosives, such as H-6, reach a temperature of 392.degree. to 482.degree. F. (200.degree. to 250.degree. C.), they will undergo a rapid, exothermic decomposition causing warheads loaded with such explosives to cookoff. Once the rapid, exothermic decomposition begins, the explosive charge becomes a heat source releasing large quantities of energy. The heats of explosion and combustion for H-6 explosive are 923 and 3,972 cal/g respectively. It follows that deflagrating explosive released to burn in the atmosphere provides a fourfold increase in the energy released. A mathematical analysis and laboratory evaluations of various commercial liner materials have indicated that the most expedient solutions to the cookoff problem are (a) to use an inert liner of low thermal conductivity and (b) to increase the thickness of the liner material. Dispersing chemical inhibitors throughout the explosive load is not a viable solution because the inhibitor must reduce the rate of heat release from the explosive load by many orders of magnitude in order to effectively extend the time to cookoff and because the quantity of inhibitor required would drastically dilute the explosive. The present approach avoids these difficulties by using a thick, 0.25-inch liner, which is compounded of material selected for an optimum melt endotherm and which contains a chemical inhibitor in relatively high concentration accessible to the interface of the liner and explosive charge.